User preferences shutting down blender; program not opening anymore at all, which causes this?
The only thing that is likely to fix that is updating drivers and using a fresh blender (I would recommend getting it from a .zip file)

You can get all the versions here blender.org/download/releases

Becuase of the error would I recommend that you don't copy the settings and only do the necessary ones, interface and input should be safe as long you don't have scripts in them.

It is possible that an automatic windows update is the reason.